You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!

Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.

Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.

Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

There are several system loggers to choose from. There are sysklogd, which is the traditional set of system logging daemons, syslog-ng, an advanced system logger, and metalog which is a highly-configurable system logger.

Do you have a /var/log/messages file? Perhaps a /var/log/boot.log?

# Watch error messages as they happen (sysklogd needed)
as root, tail -f /var/log/messages (shows last 10 lines, use a number in front of f for more lines)

You should be able to get a boot.log by editing etc/default/bootlogd (it should be self explanatory when you see it). Nex time you reboot you will then get the /var/log/boot, and it seems to be pretty complete

Bootlogd is not a very good logger. I had it installed on my Debian testing machine. It worked great with kernel 2.4.x, but in kernel 2.6.x with udev enabled it doesn't log anything (it complains about a 'bad file descriptor'.

So if anyone knows a better logger than bootlogd, I'd be glad to hear it.

If you have look at the boot process you will notice that syslog is only initiated after the ICE socket is brought up. My setup (sarge) uses the ramdisk (initrd.img) as do most installs. A lot of processes are started by the ram disk and unless you can start the syslog daemon earlier in the process (/etc/rcx.d functions via the initrd.img) functions it will not record events.